Massachusetts shifts towards Trump

Demographic factors associated with the shift include rates of college attendance, socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity

Author

Brent Benson

Published

January 12, 2025

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts remained reliably blue in the 2024 presidential election with Kamala Harris taking 61% of the vote. However, Massachusetts has seen increase in Donald Trump’s vote share going from approximately 32% of the vote in 2016 and 2020 to 36% in 2024.

The statewide shift has not been uniform with some areas moving towards Trump while other areas became even more Democratic. To better understand these shift we use statistical analysis of demographic factors to better understand which factors are associated with the shifts.

We will use Massachusetts State Representative districts as the unit to measure the vote shift and demographic factors. The advantage of using State Rep. districts is that they are approximately the same size in terms of population (currently about 44,000 people), and they are created with the guidance of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) with the goal of not breaking up voting blocks along the lines of race and minority language groups, resulting in variations that provide good contrasts for our statistical analysis. (There are more details on redistricting and district formation in the Mass. Numbers deep-dive on State Senate redistricting.)

Districts with the largest shifts

It is important to emphasize that we are examining voting behavior shifts rather than district partisanship. All of the districts with the largest shifts towards Trump are majority Democratic districts. The district with the largest shift towards Trump, the Tenth Hampden District in Springfield, remains remarkably Democratic with a Partisan Voter Index (PVI, an average of the last two presidential elections compared to the U.S. as a whole) of D+24, even after an eight point Republican shift.

The districts with the largest shifts towards Trump are:

The districts with the largest shifts away from Trump and towards Democratic candidates are:

While every one of these districts is Democratically leaning, these shifts points towards warning signs for down-ballot Democrats in swingier districts like the Third Barnstable that already has a Republican representative in David Viera.

Associated demographic factors

The primary demographic factors associated with shifts toward and away from Trump are:

  • College attendance - A higher percentage of people who have attended some college is associated with a shift away from Trump.
  • Race and ethnicity - A larger Hispanic shares of the population and a larger percentage of the population of Portuguese ancestry is correlated with a bigger shift towards Trump while a larger white share of the population is correlated with larger shifts away from Trump.
  • Socio-economic level - districts with a higher percentage of people below the poverty line moved more towards Trump.